The courthouse ceremony went well, so imagine my surprise when she wore a transparent mesh dress with a black thong and no bra to our religious wedding. She has no history of wearing revealing clothes. I’m an only child, and this was an important day for my parents, so I am angry that she thought this was the way to voice her frustrations.
The wedding was amazing and we had the best time, but what do we do going forward? My husband and I have always been friendly with her. We’ve privately not had a high view, since she screams at waiters, is rude to my brother-in-law’s friends (I think he’s been isolated from them), etc., but never voiced these concerns. I don’t even know how to behave around her now.
It doesn’t help that my husband’s family insist this must have been an accident and we are being paranoid. They want my husband to reach out to his brother to “hear his side.”
We think his brother will propose soon, which is obviously his choice, but means even more time with her. I want to let this go, but on top of feeling disrespected by the girlfriend, I now feel betrayed by the family. How do I move forward?
Angry: You can “move forward” in one thought if you can agree with one thing:
The girlfriend’s big mistake wasn’t to flip you the bird in a peekaboo dress. (Though, wow. Talk about showing people who you are.) It was taking her courthouse exclusion as a personal insult when it wasn’t about her personally.
Agree? Then apply it to your outrage right now:
You’ve taken her dress as a personal insult. But if you reread your letter, I think (hope) you’ll see the girlfriend is an angry, insecure, unstable, chaotic emergency of a person — which is no more a personal statement about you than your courthouse rule was about her.
How people respond to situations is always about them, fundamentally. But for someone in a plainly dysfunctional place — which I’ll define as “visible even to untrained eyes, through behaviors like screaming at staff, isolating from friends and baring spite-nipples” — it’s important to put up extra mental sticky notes that she’s subject to acting out, so one must disengage accordingly.
Meaning: She didn’t “disrespect” you with her clothing, she called attention to herself. (You all had a choice whether to grant it.) Your husband’s family hasn’t “betrayed” you; they’re merely as distracted as you are by her show, into believing it deserves a response at all.
She warrants attention in one sense: for the entirety of the emotional hot mesh. That problem is only worsening for your brother-in-law and his family.
You asked about her wedding antics, so I addressed them, but the real headline is the evidence she’s abusive that you’ve witnessed but not discussed.
So. Cancel the dress scandal. Politely disengage from the girlfriend. Nurture the brother-in-law bond; he needs allies she can’t scare away. And read up fast at thehotline.org.
